Surgical instruments, such as the Cor-Knot manufactured by LSI Solutions and as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,833,237 to Sauer, are used to replace hand tied knots at remotes sites within the body. Such instruments, however, are limited to use with a single suture and a single crimp and generate significant waste during the suture tying process, which waste must be accounted for and could be lost within the patient during surgery if safeguards are not taken. In this system, a single suture crimp is loaded into the end effector and is secured for a single crimp use. To load the crimp and the snare that passes the suture through the crimp, a loading hook is passed through the end effector. The hook has the crimp at its distal end and is attached to the snare loop, which is threaded through the crimp. To secure the crimp between the handle and the snare loop, the snare loop is secured and held outwards as a loop by a teardrop shaped plastic handle. After the hook is threaded into the end effector and the crimp is pressed into the distal end of the end effector, the user must remove the large, plastic handle and dispose of it properly. As such, the action of loading a reload crimp into the device generates a teardrop shaped piece of plastic waste for every single crimp. Care must be taken because there is no positive method of securing the crimp into the ready position within the crimping device. If the crimp becomes dislodged, it may not form a proper securing crimp. This may require the suture to be replaced, which may be extremely difficult. Once the snare loop is used to pull the sutures through the crimp, the snare loop must also be discarded. If during the process of passing the sutures through the crimp the sutures do not fully pass through the crimp, it is possible that the very small crimp could be dislodged from the crimping device and potentially lost within the patient.
It would be beneficial to provide a cord-loading device that has minimal or no waste generated during a procedure and that provides multiple crimps that do not need to be individually loaded during the procedure.